Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave
Eight Hundred Grapes: A Novel
Synopsis:
There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide…
Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.
But just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.
Georgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets…
Review:
Eight Hundred Grapes was a frustrating read for me. The main character, Georgia, acts like a petulant child even though she is thirty years old. Oh she annoyed me. She thought she knew what was best for everyone even when they told her that what she wanted for them is not what they wanted.
Georgia returns home about a week before she is supposed to be married there. She found out something about her fiance which sent her running. Now she needs to figure out what she is going to do - get married still or move on. Though really she puts off thinking or even talking about this to mess in everyone else's affairs. Why deal with her problems when she can butt into other peoples?Once she gets home to her families vineyard things aren't as stress free as she thought they would be. Her parents have secrets, her brothers have secrets, really pretty much everyone is doing something Georgia doesn't agree with. She is determined to make everyone do what she wants, regardless of what they say they want. I mean she knows what is best for everyone obviously!
"You're just acting like you know the right think for everyone when you don't even know the right thing for yourself."
The biggest issue Georgia finds when she comes home? Her dad is selling the vineyard to their hated competitors. She is not at all happy about that as her dad obviously really doesn't want to do this. No matter how many times he tells her this is what he wants she doesn't believe it. She tries her hardest to get her dad out of the sale. The company buying it must have tricked him or something. She should have been consulted before the sale, even though she made her life far away and wanted nothing to do with the vineyard in years. She was so frustrating! Constantly trying to tell people what they should want/do and not listening to anyone! Then yelling at them/throwing temper tantrums when they don't listen to her. Argh!
"Have you ever considered that your desire for us to keep the vineyard has less to do with us and more to do with you?"
Her spoiled little brat attitude I couldn't deal with. Her she knows what is best for everyone when she can't even figure out what she wants to do for herself was annoying. I really couldn't stand her. Since she was the main character, the story is told through her, it made the book very frustrating to read. I was reading it and part of the story is will she still get married? I found I really didn't care either way. Get married or don't, but just stop acting like you are two. The end, how everything works out, that was just not very good. Well it was a good thing for most of the characters, but Georgia? It was hard not to roll my eyes. I had thought that the author might be going the way it did, but then I thought no. That can't be right. There is not really any set up for that so it wouldn't make sense to have it end that way, only it does. So it wasn't believable. All this whining temper tantrums leads to a let down of an ending. Not a book for me.
Rating: ★
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